For episode 101, we're challenging ourselves to make a technically family friendly, swear free episode! Why is the sky blue? Well it turns out it took a lot of science to understand why! And what is speech disfluency? Well it's like... um... you'll see!

Images we Talk About:
Green Flash
Sunset

Timestamps:

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We also learn about: 

StellarNet: A Brief History of the Sky’s Blueness
Blog: The bizarre myth that Ancient Greeks couldn't see blue
2023 Paper: Revisiting the question “Why is the sky blue?”
Wiki- John Tyndall
The Conversation: John Tyndall: the forgotten co‑founder of climate science
Wiki: Rayleigh Scattering
NASA: The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Scientific American: Mirages
IFL Science: Orange Sky
The Great Oxidation Event: How Cyanobacteria Changed Life
Royal Museums Greenwich: Why Is The Sky Blue
Mars in a Box: Martian Sunsets

Tom & Ella are out sick! So enjoy this recast of when Tom was healthy and on SciShow Tangents!

OR enjoy our 2 hours on the Project 4 Awesome livestream, basically a video podcast!

OR check out all our other stuff at https://www.LetsLearnEverything.com/

Thanks for your patience y'all! - Tom, Ella, & Caroline

You asked, and we finally answered, today we are Finally, actually learning everything! Something that is definitely possible and easy to do. Caroline covers infinity, which can include basically anything, Ella covers what everything is made of, and Tom does the rest! Simple, right?

Images we Talk About:
Cantor's Diagonal Argument
The Bullet Cluster

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We also learn about: 

Infinity is the amount I love you guys - oh I made such a noise of disgust, my infinity could beat your infinity, quoting The Fault in Our Stars, ancient Greeks had a horror for the infinite, Euclid refused to use infinity, we have no physical proof that any item can be infinite, turning water into wine and counting to infinity, next time someone says I love you infinity plus one call them a number annihilator, pre-scowling, we ask Caroline a million questions about sets, sets offer a new language for math, “actually Ella they use the word transfinite”, Caroline rage baits Ella, Ella loves Cantor’s diagonal argument but people at the time HATED it, Cantor was a “corrupter of youth”, the universe is everything, god dammit is there more than matter, pigeons and pizza and Ella’s giant gengar plush are made of quarks and leptons, ordinary matter is just 5% of the universe, 26.8% is dark matter and the rest is dark energy, dark energy and matter are not interchangeable - dark just means we can’t observe them, your MOM is massive, 1933 dark matter is theorized to make the math work, dark matter is not a theory it is an observation of missing mass, the differing mass of the bullet cluster, halos of dark matter around galaxies, red shift in every direction, don’t @ me about the accelerated expansion of the universe, dark energy is the mysterious force that keeps the universe expanding, heat death or re-contraction, dark matter and dark energy are warring siblings trying to pull everything together and apart and we’re stuck in the middle, list of all wikipedia pages, OH NO IT’S INTERESTING, monk stuff, the exclamation mark came during the humanist era of the renaissance, oh no we printed the ironic bible! inverted exclamation marks, exclamation mark haters, old comics had exclamation marks for periods! Making Beowulf Scream, Lo! per my last email, our show didn’t start with an exclamation mark - it snuck its way into being beloved, no one is sure how the exclamation mark ended up in programming languages, DO anthropomorphize the exclamation mark, please don’t be disappointed we didn’t stop the podcast, We Didn't Stop the Podcast.

We Didn't Stop the Podcast Lyrics

Sources:
Wikipedia: Infinity Symbol
Wikipedia: Infinity
Polytechnique: A (Very) Brief History of Infinity
Britannica: Infinity
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Infinity
1983 Paper: The Realization of Infinity: On the Philosophy of John M. Anderson
Scientific American: Some Mathematicians Don’t Believe in Infinity
2017 Paper: Actual and Potential Infinity
Schechter: Potential versus Completed Infinity
Medium: Infinity Isn’t Just a Number — It’s a Mind-Bending Universe of Paradoxes
Youtube: minutephysics
Youtube: Jim Fowler
Blog: The Math of Dr Who #4.2

The author, historian, and person of many fascinations Iszi Lawrence teaches us how to get into ancient Egyptian heaven! Plus we learn about a bit of everything else from dinosaurs to medieval almond milk!

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:14) Getting Into Ancient Egyptian Heaven
(00:45:31) Questions for Iszi
(01:08:59) Outro

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Images we talk about:
Anurognathus
The Tring Tiles

We also learn about: Todays question is how to take on two attackers, “I really recommend violence if you have neurodiversity”, Ma’at, getting into the Egyptian afterlife is an escape room, why Egypt was geographically perfect, I’m going to put a mastaba on my mastaba, there were ancient Egyptian archaeologists of ancient Egypt, you don’t think with your brain that’s weird, Allan’s mummified body in the King’s College London library, the mummification industry, dodgy ibis mummy dealers, pyramids were a giant sign that said “ROB ME IM RICH”, King tut also packed too much underwear, Anubis guides you through a video game level of challenges, the hall of two truths and a lie, weighing your heart in court, Ammit has the head of crccodile body of a tiger legs of a hippo my perfect woman, your heart has to way no more and no less than a feather, the scarab is a pay to win heart silencer, pubs were public houses when you brewed too much beer and it was women’s work! almond milk was around during the medieval times, we are story brained and we pay attention to the weird things not the boring ones, he showed me his whip scorpion, nanotyrannus, why do you like dinosaurs - why do you like eating? Anurognathus, toddlers comes from drunken walking, sad means not sober, the suffragette jiu jitsu dojo, the tring tiles was teen jesus.

While we take some time to rest and plan out the new year, enjoy our episode of Escape This Podcast as the three of us use cleverness and chaos to solve this escape room!

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:05) The Escape Room
(01:20:19) Puzzle Talk Back

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Images we talk about:
The Spa Controls
The Spa Sign
Ring Toss
The Spa Sign with Sun
The Full Room Write Up

It's the new year! Which means it's time to learn about the most interesting thing... ourselves?? We answer YOUR questions with OUR answers, so learn a bit more about us, science, and the show!

Links we Talk About:
Our Top Songs Playlist
Magnetic Fields Tiny Desk
Anni DiRusso Tiny Desk
Doechii Tiny Desk
Dr.Cal Whale Cancer TikTok

Timestamps:
(00:07:06) Welcome to the Q&A
(00:31:45) Science
(00:52:28) Fun
(01:04:26) Making the Podcast
(01:27:06) Personal
(01:45:55) Outro

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We also learn about: 

I was in the recording I know how long it took, tick correction corner, Caroline you gotta wrangle us, the ugly stepsister, City the Animation, Superman, playlist linked above, The Mars House, Levinia, Peak, Megabonk, Animal Crossing, Despelote, duck wraps, I’m an anytime burrito fan, falling out of and back in love with sciences, the Vera Rubin Observatory, lysosome mitochondria and ribosome, organelle astrology, AI and carbon pedantry, Ella’s PhD journey, solar system chocolate bar, our horror movie archetypes, experimenting on our cohosts, pride and prejudice romance, centaur anatomy, researcher blogs rock, scheduling and actually starting, what we hate and love about the show, we don’t have to be friends, podcasting is good for the brain actually, dream guests, Caroline runs, the rhythm game search, burnout planning and accepting mistakes and communal burnout watch, collecting magnets and yarn and weird pokemon figures, Dalek on a trampoline, why Tom wears a hat, bingo cards over resolutions, Ella’s getting marri- WELL TOM’S GOING TO MAGIC CON VEGAS BABY.

The HaLearnDays are here!! And with it come learning, laughs, and fun facts from us and friends of the show, as well as a few surprise new friends!

Images we Talk About:
Bat Carrying
Bristol Stool Chart
Lego Head Diagram
The Praise the Lord Show

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:08:10) Bats
(00:19:45) Livingston's Body
(00:25:18) Pi & PIE
(00:34:45) Lego Head Passage
(00:44:02) Bird Brains
(00:56:04) Tomatoes
(01:10:35) Alpha-gal
(01:16:27) Rice to Riches
(01:26:37) Mission Impossible & Backmasking
(01:42:29) Outro

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We also learn about: 

As Hank always says: wah wah wah wah wah, it says that I should complain in the script but I like it, Egg nog is just raw eggs right? redacted is such a beautiful name, rock paper scissors video content, drunk bats slur their echolocation, bats carrying bats, weekend at burniesing Livingston, I’d carry any of you for nine months, Pi and PIE from father and son, do you think J and Gretchen got their gifts at the same store? philology, proto-indo-european, the FART of the lego head, Ella’s heart grows 3 times its size for bacronyms, lego heads pass in about 2 days, chickadees growing and shrinking their brain connections, testing bird barcoding in the chickadome, I wish I could delete part of my brain to watch eternal sunshine again, davinci would have made that flying machine earlier if he had red sauce, tomatl is nahuatl not even proto-indo-european, we can all agree tomatoes smell evil, 150 years before tomatos and pasta combined, alphagal syndrome from ticks, once bitten twice allergic, Tom Scott gifts a can of rice pudding for us to open, allegedly LLE is a money laundering scheme, Mission Impossible morse code, the hidden code in LLE’s theme, Edison was the first to notice backmasking, the Eligibles Car Trouble, here’s to my sweet satan, winners don’t do drugs, raise a cup to our sweet satan.

Sources:

Bats Flying Drunk Paper
NYTimes Tomato History
Smithsonian Mag Tomato History
The Incredible paper: Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what they looked like, and where they came from
Records of Tomato Reactions
Atlas Obscura Backmasking History

More sources will be added soon!

What are the most EXTREME lifeforms on Earth, and how are they surprisingly important to study? And what is the long yet recent history of astrology, and why do we reach for it?

Things we Talk About:
The Seal Stream
Sea lion running
Paper Clipping: Female Astrologer
Paper Clipping: Suffragette Books
Paper Clipping: WW2 and Astrology
Paper Clipping: Pimms Ad

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) Extremophiles
(00:57:55) Astrology
(01:43:59) Outro

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We also learn about: 

We’ve put tardigrades through every red bull task imaginable but they’re NOT extremophiles, extremotolerant vs extremophiles that thrive, thermophiles at 122 celsius, anglophiles, what would it suck to experience, psychrophiles, acidophiles and alkaliphiles, hypobarophiles experiencing 500x our pressure, oligatroph, polyextromophiles, life has found a way in so many extreme places, the chernobyl black mold, not just growing towards radiation but eating Hot Particles, fungi have survived harsh radiation in the Earth’s past, melanin lets the fungi handle and perceive radiation safely, it’s similar to photosynthesis though in the same way a tsunami is similar to a glass of water, conan the bacterium can live inside nuclear reactors, DNA redundancy, krill that makes antifreeze proteins, osmoconfromers, acidophile taken to a lab and finally thriving at .7 ph, it’s also hard as hell to capture and study and keep these extremophiles alive, extremophiles gave us PCR, we also us extremophile e coli, bioremediation is what I took when I failed bio and was tutored by an extremophile, we have so much to do-actually that was pretty funny, bioplastics, what extreomophiles teach us about astrobiology, letting some bacteria chill on the outside of the ISS for 3 years, damn girl you’re making me re-evaluate the limits of life, our nuanced and conflicting feeling on astrology, yay we get to read our horoscopes- wait fuck why am I happy about that? babylonian horoscopes, star charts for things like seasons actually were right, the Enuma Anu Enlil collection of omens, what’s your mother’s maiden name and pincode horoscope,  the legacy of the endless pig, uh oh we’re having fun talking about horoscopes, medieval astrology in the royal court and the sciences, before we knew about the earth going around the sun the stars explained the seasons, in the 1700s astrology was seen as a sham, of course royal watching tabloids bring about astrology 2.0, scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything to say about princess margaret, globe conflict 2 electric boogaloo, a pims advert is a rich text, the horoscope test, god the people yearn for therapy, the barnum effect, zodiacs are part of our culture - so something to connect with, the correlation of uncertainty and horoscope popularity, how to manage uncertainty without horoscopes, video games offer a structure and challenge and reward that can help people cope with hard times.

Sources:
NOAA: What is an Extremophile?
Life: Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Nature: Life in Extreme Environments
PMC: Genomics of an extreme psychrophile, Psychromonas ingrahamii
The Biologist: Eating Gamme Rays for Breakfast
Research Gate: A Case Study of Strains Inhabiting Chernobyl Reactor No. 4
Chemical Communications: : The Incredible Cell Membrane Adaptations of Extremophiles to Harsh Environments
Life: Extremophiles and Extremophilic Behaviour
Biotechnology Advances: Structural Features of Thermozynes
Science: Conan the Baterium
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews: Oxidative Stress Resistance in Deinococcus radiodurans
Polar Biology: Cold Resistance the Krill Euphausia superba
Extremophiles: Picrophilus oshimae
Life: Biotechniological Applications of Extremophile Research
Wiki: Thermos aquaticus
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Polymerases as Useful Reagents for Biotechnology
PNAS: Microbial Growth at Hyperaccelerations up to 403,627 × g
Frontiers in Microbiology: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context
Journal of Indian Institute of Science: Bioprospecting Extremophiles for Astrobiology
NASA: Astrobiology
Frontiers in Microbiology: DNA Damage and Survival Time Course of Deinococcal Cell Pellets During 3 Years of Exposure to Outer Space
New Scientist: Radiation Resistant Bacteria Could Survive Journey From Earth to Mars

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2013 Paper: The Solar Eclipse Omen Texts from Enūma Anu Enlil
National Geographic: History of Horocopes
My Modern Met: Mystical History of Astrology
British Newspaper Archive 
BBC: Who Actually Writes Horoscopes
2020 Paper: The Man Behind the Horoscope Column- R H Naylor
2005 Paper: A History of Astrology Part I: Origins to the Romans
The Guardian: How Astrology Paved the Way for Predictive Analytics
BBC: Is Astrology Backed By Science?
2022: Even The Stars Think That I Am Superior
BBC: Is There Any Science in Astrology?
Scientific American: Is Astrology Real? Here’s What Science Says
McGill University: How Astrology Escaped the Pull of Science
BBC: The Anxieties and Apps Fuelling the Astrology Boom

http://www.LetsLearnEverything.com/q

It's time to submit your questions for our annual Q&A episode!

What, when, where, why, and how... do we sneeze? There's a surprising amount of mystery to the thing we do all the time, and a lot to learn about! And how many parables and metaphors that we use are actually true? Let's actually dig in to the research and bust some myths!! I mean... break some... falsehoods!!

Images we Talk About:
The Rat Diagram
Caseids
Diplodocus Bones
Plane Diagram
Moai Walking

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Sneezing
(00:57:55) Parable Mythbusters
(01:43:59) Outro

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We also learn about: 

Caroline was inspired by being sick,  theories of sneezing, sneezing in the odyssey, Aristotle said burping and farting are not divine, 25 sextillion molecules in every breath, it’s a wonder we’re not sneezing all the time, sneezing only goes to your brain stem, a sneeze can send particles 8 meters, what ion channel? last year we made sneezless mice, le petite mort and le petit orgasm, the incredible mid-sneeze mouse diagram, we’re gonna talk about - ghoooosts, A.C.H.O.O or the photic sneeze reflex, our explanations for sneezing reflect our understanding of science at the time, snatiation, S.N.A.T.I.A.T.I.O.N, sneezing from getting horny, pee chills, a sneeze is just a more obvious indicator that wires get crossed, diagnostic sneeze testing, finding the first sneezing animal, the earliest diaphgram, chickens sneeze, African wild dogs voting by sneeze, dolphins chuffing, bugs aren’t part of the sneeze club, unlike the mythbusters we won’t be blowing up cars, okay maybe a few, if you put a frog into boiling water it won’t jump out it will die, boiling frogs in search of the soul, the climate change metaphor works for brain dead leaders, the survivorship bias meme plane, the image is fictitious but Abraham Wald is even cooler, America’s Bletchley - The Statistical Research Group, some people believe the heads had bodies, oh my god they did, the walking Moai, the deforestation happened before the people, invasive rats without a natural predator, pretending we’re surprised about colonialism being the culprit, we didn’t need to do carbon dating to find some of these answers guys.

Sources:
1990 Paper: The History of Sneezing
2013 Paper: The Omen of Sneezing
2009 Paper: Sneeze reflex: Facts and fiction
Smithsonian: Why Do We Sneeze?
National Geographic: The Air You Breathe Is Full of Surprises
Wiki: Sneeze
2025 Paper: The Sneeze Reflex in Physiological and Pathological states: a mini review
2024 Paper: Mouse Sneezing Study
Nature: Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash
Scientific American: Looking at the Sun Can Trigger a Sneeze
2010 Paper: When the Sun Prickles Your Nose: An EEG Study Identifying Neural Bases of Photic Sneezing
ScienceLine: Why Do People Sneeze When They Look at the Sun?
OMIM: Gastric Sneezing
2009 Paper: Arousal and Sneezing
2017 Article: An Ancient Origin for the Diaphragm
2022 Paper: Lung Evolution in Vertebrates and the Water-to-Land Transition
National Geographic: Animal Sneezing
National Geographic: African Wild Dogs Vote by Sneeze
Oceanbites: Sneeze, Cough, Chuff: Respiratory Irritation in Dolphins
Natural History Museum: Hagfishes
Smithsonian: 14 Fun Facts About Hagfish
Sci-Show- Aquatic Sneezing
2022 Paper: Sponges Sneeze
2022 Paper: Dinosaur Sickness
National Geographic: First Dinosaur Found with a Respiratory Disease
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Atlantic on The Boiling Frog
Know Your Meme: Survivorship Bias Plane
Cameron Moll Blog Post about Original Drawing
Abraham Wald's Plane Statistic Memorandum
Terry Hunt's Incredible "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island"
The Walking Moai Paper